Holmes, John Haynes (1879–1964)

US religious leader and social reformer. He helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, serving as national vice-president for over 50 years, and he helped organize the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 1918–19, becoming chairman in 1939. An ardent pacifist, he left the Unitarians in protest at their support of the US entry into World War I and founded the Community Church in New York City. As a prohibitionist, a supporter of striking workers, a Zionist, editor of Unity magazine 1921–46, and chairman of the New York City Civic Affairs Committee 1929–38 that exposed municipal corruption, he made his church into a model for a pluralistic congregation.

Born in Philadelphia, he was ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1904, and helped found the Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice in 1908 while conducting a radical social ministry at the Church of the Messiah, New York City. A leading US proponent of Gandhi, he led early public protests against Hitler (1933), and later fought McCarthyism. He wrote over 20 books, including his autobiography I Speak for Myself 1959.